


These Twelve Years

by VenetaPsi



Category: Banana Bus Squad
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Letters, Love Confessions, Love Letters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 06:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20559521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VenetaPsi/pseuds/VenetaPsi
Summary: Brian,I've written and rewritten this beginning over and over. How do you even start a letter like this? I wasn't going to write it at all, actually. Evan says I should. He keeps giving me that look and that little pout. You know the one.Anyways.





	These Twelve Years

_Brian,_

_I've written and rewritten this beginning over and over. How do you even start a letter like this? I wasn't going to write it at all, actually. Evan says I should. He keeps giving me that look and that little pout. You know the one. _

_Anyways. Do you remember the first day of freshman year? Both of us fourteen years old and in first hour History. I was sent to the back because I was tall and the teacher instantly decided I was a deviant because I was wearing a hoodie and had headphones on. I didn't know anyone because of the Catholic middle school I went to. I remember that you looked up when I came in, looked away from your group of friends and smiled. _

_Later that day at lunch you pulled me over to your table by the sleeve of my hoodie and that's where I sat for the rest of the school year. And at some point it stopped being me and your friends and it became "us". _

_We didn't see each other at all during the summer, or even talk because neither of us knew how. I remember seeing you, sitting on a bench outside of school on the first day of Sophomore year. I stood there, thirty feet away, too afraid to approach you in case something had changed over break. I was looking down at my phone and changing music and then I glanced up when I heard footsteps. _

_You smiled and told me you were starting to think I wasn't going to show up. _

_That's the same year you got a crush on Adam Lither, the Junior and called me sobbing in the middle of the night because you thought I'd hate you for being bisexual. In the end it was me who convinced you to ask him out, and you two were going steady for the rest of the school year. We always laughed at the way girls would pout when they found out you weren't single- and was with a man. _

_And though you tried to forget it, I remember how Adam turned out and how everything fell apart and I remember how you came to school as a Junior looking like death warmed over. Sixteen and you were quiet as a mouse for the first week and you refused to talk to anyone except for me. I'd never seen you look so fragile and it scared me, more than anything else in my life. _

_I'd forgotten at some point that you were as human as me. You seemed beyond that, all bright smiles and you were such a genuinely good fucking person that I could've sworn you were an angel._

_Then he broke you. _

_And you told me later, once the color had returned to your cheeks and the strangled edge had left your laugh, that'd I'd caught you on your plummet down. And you recovered. _

_Senior year we went to prom together because we hated the rest of our grade so much it was amazing neither of us had committed a felony yet. And we dressed up too, because when else would we have the opportunity to, and got drunk on cheap smuggled alcohol and loud music and exhaustion. I remember stumbling back to your parents house at two in the morning. I remember the way you glowed, all alone in the middle of an empty street under the dark sky. I remember playing video games until we crashed and waking up beside you._

_I remember wondering if you'd ever look at me the way you used to look at him. _

_The year after graduation was a disaster. We were all adults now and everyone in our grade split up, seeking out careers or college or anything at all to keep us alive. I went to University for two years, playing gigs at bars or cafes and using my guitar and voice to pay the rent. When I couldn't stand school another minute I dropped out with no degree and fell back on my brothers and video games. _

_I had no idea what had happened to you. We hadn't kept in touch. _

_One of my brothers introduced me to YouTube and I started recording when I played games. It was simple, it worked. I began to hear about names and channels as I grew, started doing collabs and making friends. I stopped playing gigs and started making videos full time. _

_The first time I heard your voice was three years after we graduated. You were playing with Evan, Mini and Marcel. I didn't know any of them at the time but I'd recognize your laugh anywhere. _

_I emailed you and waited two days with bated breath, wondering if I'd ever get a reply. I was too anxious to even upload and fell back on writing music. Then you answered and next thing I knew I was in a teamspeak call with you and we were both laughing hysterically with tears streaming down our faces. _

_That's how I remet you and that's when I found my friend group. Over the next year you introduced me to all the people you knew. It was like freshman year again, only we were grown men playing video games. From then on we met everyone else together. Delirious, Kryoz, Scotty, everyone else was introduced to us as a pair. You wouldn't have it any other way, and neither would I. _

_New year's came in a flurry of GTA and Gmod and then you came to visit me. We were both so hesitant, nervous, like we were meeting for the first time. Neither of us were quite sure how the other person would be irl, caught up on highschool memories and apprehensive of the changes that had occurred in both of us. _

_It was perfect. Neither of us were the same but it still worked. We were still a pair that fit together so well it was like four years of never touching, never speaking face to face hadn't changed a thing in our dynamic. Sure, there were subtle differences we both had to equate for, but we were willing and most importantly eager to breach those barriers. _

_You met Joe and Tony and I've never seen my dogs so divided on whether they hated or loved a person. You really shouldn't have antagonized Joe, you know. _

_From then on was more YouTube and constant visits. We were only a couple hours apart and you were always willing to take the train to see me. A couple of them we vlogged and that's when our fans started to think we were a couple. You kept laughing at me for getting flustered each time you brought it up. I didn't mind, really. I never objected, after all. _

_By then ten years had passed since we'd met and I would have said in an instant that you were my best friend. You got me in ways others didn't, made me laugh when I was upset, talked me through multiple breaks ups and the following mental issues. We were the dynamic duo of foreigners, blatantly European against the other Americans in our group. _

_I remember the very first time you mentioned the visa to America. I know you too well Brian. I knew in an instant you had your heart set on that path, maybe even before you were certain. And I didn't blame you. It was exhausting, the travel we had to do for conventions, never seeing our friends, living nocturnally to meet American time zones. _

_But I guess you knew me just as well, because I could tell from the start you knew I wasn't going to go with you. I know because you never asked me to. You made me a promise, way back in freshman year, that you wouldn't ask me to do anything you knew I truly, wholeheartedly wouldn't. You didn't ask. In return, I didn't try to stop you from leaving. _

_A year later we clung to each other in an Irish airport as they announced your flight, neither of us wanting to be the first to leave. There were tears in your eyes and on my cheeks and I thought of prom. Of that night out on the street, dizzy and staring up at the stars on the way home._

_There were stars in your eyes and I felt faint. _

_I let go first. _

_The eleventh year we knew each other was agony. Physically and emotionally. I was exhausted, the only person in Europe and I hated to travel. I was on my own little island, had Ireland all to myself. _

_You were across the ocean and I could tell you were happier in America then here. But we were both aching, separated by glass and crashing waves. It became routine, on sleepless nights for us to call the other. And we'd just talk awhile and fall asleep to the sound of each other's breath, thousands of miles away. _

_Brian Michael Hanby, I have loved you for years. _

_Loved you from the moment you pulled me to your table, stubborn and unyielding. I loved how you showed yourself to me, trusted me enough not to hide away. That you let me hold you together and that you danced with me under the moon. _

_I loved that you invited me back into your life, that you brought energy and laughter into mine. _

_I loved your gorgeous smile and handsome face and beautiful laugh._

_I loved how you made my heart sing and my stomach flip and always started a panicked thud in my chest. _

_I will always love you. And I wish I could have said that to your face. I wish these words weren't expressed on paper, sealed in an envelope that you will never read. _

_I wish you'd never met me, because then you wouldn't have flown back to Ireland. _

_And then maybe your plane wouldn't have gone down. _

_Brian, I have loved you for every single one of these twelve years that I've known you. _

_Goodbye. _

_-David_


End file.
